Network rendering

I'm trying to figure out how to submit a network render in AFX on a mac without copying all local files to the watch folder. In windows I would just add files to my comp using an absolute network path by going to the network/my machine/shared folder/path to file, all the render machines see the file and render the comp. How do I do that on a Mac? I cannot figure out how to add files on my local machine to a comp using a network path.

That is clever the way you have been doing it on win. I haven't tried this, but it might work on Mac. Create a link starting at / that points to your footage. On your local, machine, it will be local link and on the other machines, you mount that drive and make a network link. I.e. suppose your footage is actually at /MacintoshHD/Users/Foobar/MyFootage. On the local machine you would do something like:
ln -s /MacintoshHD/Users/Foobar/MyFootage /FootageRemote
On the remote machines, you would mount that drive as say /Volumes/SourceMachine and do:
ln -s /Volumes/SourceMachine/Users/Foobar/MyFootage /FootageRemote
and then add all of your footage in AE starting at /FootageRemote. It is key that the /FootageRemote not share a root with the project I think, otherwise the relative path will be tried.
And no guarantee this will work! But if this is a workflow you really like, it might be worth the hour to give it a try.

Similar Messages

Set up After Effects CS 6 for network rendering with only a single license.

I have searched on and off a couple of days to find specific setup instructions for submitting projects to network rendering but all I can find refers to somehow installing AE on several machines in a non-license mode and, essentially, submitting a "batch" type job that get distributed, sync'd and collected. OK, I get this. But I find nothing on the details of installing on several machines.
So assuming I understand things to this point, the question is really how do you install multiple AE6 copies to systems with only a single license? I have a single license key with a CS 6 Premium Suite and would expect that I wouldn't be able to get past Activation after installing or am afraid of trying lest Adobe think I'm attempting to circumvent licensing.
Thanks in advance for any help.

> am afraid of trying lest Adobe think I'm attempting to circumvent licensing
Have no fear. Just do it. There's no risk to trying to install software on as many machines as you like. Even in the cases in which you only have a license to use our software on two machines, the worst thing that happens is that you are told to deactivate on one computer before activating on another.
See these posts:
installing After Effects CC render engines with Adobe Creative Cloud
codecs and the render engine in After Effects CS6 and After Effects CC

Network Rendering Or Anything Faster Possible?

Is it possible in flash to use network rendering? Or is there
any other way to render faster when exporting a movie as a high
quality AVI ?
Thanks!
~Austin

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Is network rendering really faster overall?

I'm just getting into network rendering. I've setup 4 machines as the farm. All is well and the image sequence is being processed pretty quickly. However, after rendering out several thousand static PSD frames, I realized I still had to go through the process of converting them to a movie. Importing them into Adobe Media Encoder was relatively easy, but it still took a long time to encode the final output as video. When you factor in the additional step of encoding the movie, I'd estimate a very small amount of time saving through network rendering.
What am I missing? How is this really faster in the end? I'd love to be enlightened. Is there a simple (and much faster way) to go from composition to final h.264 video through network rendering?
Thanks!

Run a test yourself...
Set your three machines to render a PSD sequence, the once it's done use AME on one of them to make an h264.
On the other machine send your composition to AME and render an h264.
In my experience the more computers doing the heavy lifting (ie working out your AE file) the better. Once the image sequence is done the easy bit to process is getting it out into another format.

Qmaster network rendering for AE?

I was browsing the Final Cut Studio 2 site over at Apple.com and ran into this little tidbit...
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/compressor/encoding.html
"Qmaster uses the processing capacity of your network computers for a wide range of tasks, including encoding and rendering for motion graphics produced by applications such as Apple Shake, Adobe After Effects, and Autodesk Maya. Configure Qmaster clusters to run jobs for encoding, rendering, or both,"
So does this mean the new FCS2 Qmaster can network render AE projects?

Final Cut Studio 1 can network render After Effects projects. This isn't new functionality in FCS2. The biggest caveat is that each rendering node needs an installed copy of After Effects as well as any AE plug-ins used in your project.

Setting up network rendering in After Effects CC

Hi there,
I finally have some free time on my hand and I´d like to use it to optimize our workflow.
We are a very small post-production shop and do a lot of projects parallel.
So one Issue obviously is, when I need my workstation to work but also need to render comps in AE.
We have a small farm setup for our 3DS Max renderings and now I´m trying to use it for after effects aswell.
We have all our files on a server, which all render nodes can access.
The only way so far I found to get things working:
1. Install After effects on the render nodes.
2. Place the "render only" text file.
3. Copy all necessary plugins.
4. Setup a watch folder.
5. Open AE project to render on my workstation.
6. Add comp to render queue, using "multi machine" settings, define output format and path.
The next part is the one I don´t like...:
7. Collect files using "Enable watchfolder render".
8. Wait til After effects copies gigabytes and gigabytes of footage files from a folder on our server to ANOTHER folder on the SAME server...
Why?
Why can´t I just leave the footage files sitting comfortably where they are accessible by all render nodes and instead have to collect them into another place?
There MUST be a way to avoid this, even if googling didn´t get me any answers so far...right?
And how can I automatically open the rendered sequence 8after its finished of course) in Adobe Media encoder and export it to the final movie format?

ok,
sometimes checking your submenus can be really helpful..
For anyone wondering the same: in the "collect files" dialog there is a dropdown menu called "Collect source files". If you choose "None (Project Only)" it only saves the project to the watchfolder, so if all render nodes can access the source files on the server they will do exactly that and there is no need to copy huge amounts of render files anymore...

Network Rendering Works only on 1 Render Node Machine

Hello All,
I have a MacPro 2013 Trashcan and two PC's both 64 and running windows 7. Both of them have 6gb of ram.
Each of the PC's are running the CC 2014 render engines and the project effects and fonts are fine. The connection is Cat6 to router for all.
My MacPro is the main machine and I have the Shared folder on my desktop called RenderFarm and the watch folders are set to that.
Both PC's recognize the Network job and start, then after a few seconds one of them errors out and goes back to watch status. If I start it again, it kicks the other one off.
This happens also when I connect a Macbookpro instead of one of the PC's.
I have outputted in tif, jpg and png and the results are the same. Sometimes the main MacPro will error out as well.
All the machines have individual names, the project is set to use 5 machines and the skip existing files is checked.
In the log after one of the machines errors out it says sometjing like "After Effects error: the file exists but is unable to be read ( 3 :: 0 )
I cannot, for the life of me see where I am going wrong. The router is my Motorola SBG6580, could that be the issue? that files are not being delivered quickly enough? but if I create a project thats 10mins long and just a red solid, it fails also.
Or perhaps that my shared folder is on the main MacPro?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance, oh and dont buy a MacPro2013, after 9 months mine went up in smoke and flames, literally...

Hey Vinay,
All the versions are up to date after a fresh install of Windows on Both PC's on Monday therfore a fresh creative cloud and a new install on a brand new Mac Pro Trash can, please see the screen shots of each machine.
Can you suggest anything else?

Compressor network rendering from Intel Mac to PowerPC Macs

Has anyone had any experience utilizing a Power PC G5 render farm for Compressor? I have the option of setting up a render farm utilizing up to 15 PowerPC G5s from an Intel Mac. Due to system limitations the Intel Mac will be running FCP 7 with Compressor 3.5 while the G5s are to be running FCP 6 with Compressor 3.0.
These 15 G5s are going to be sent to surplus if I don't take advantage. But I don't want to have 15 computers sitting around that won't render.
Any suggestions or experiences with such a situation?

I've had some experience using both Intels and PowerPCs in a QCluster. The hardware doesn't matter much, as long as all of the software is the same. Since you're using 2 different versions of Compressor and QMaster in this particular cluster, you will have compatibility problems. Also, depending on how you're connecting these machines, distributed encoding may not be a good solution.
A couple of weeks ago, I was testing a similar setup for a work group here. They had some extra iMacs that they wanted to network together to encode some Image Sequences. I ran some tests, and found that encoding without a cluster and with just a local cluster inside of just one MacPro was twice as fast as adding other nodes via ethernet.
But the basic answer to your question is that all service and controller nodes must have matching software versions. This is explained in greater detail in .

Network rendering for FCP?

Just wondering if anyone knows of a plug-in that would allow FCP to use multiple computers to accelerate its renders.
I know Compressor has distributed rendering. Would be great to see it implemented in FCP.

It's always helpful to search as you can find answers that way too:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=836506
That post was just a few threads below.

Renderfarm error: Pre-Flight Error: Unable to import previously rendered file

I have an error message I am receiving during network rendering on a renderfarm, and was hoping for some help. The error is this: "Pre-Flight Error: Unable to import previously rendered file."
Here is my setup and some details:
The user makes a comp, and adds it to the render queue set to render as a quicktime movie file. Then they run a script which precomps everything and sets it to render as a image sequence with "Skip existing files" checked. This comp also has a post-render action set to import & replace usage. After this comp is rendered, it gets pulled back into the project and the original render item starts rendering the movie file using the previously rendered image sequence as it's only layer.
This project gets saved to a server where our render nodes are watching the folder. All the render nodes pick up the project and proceed to render the image sequence. Then, after they are done, 1 machine will pick up the second render item and begin rendering the image sequence into the final quicktime movie.
All of this goes smoothly about 90% of the time. However, in some cases an error shows up in the watch folder html page for the 2nd render item (the one converting the image sequence to the movie). The error says "Pre-Flight Error: Unable to import previously rendered file." After the error occurs, no machines will start rendering the project.
My first guess is that the render engine on one machine somehow skips rendering the image sequence comp, and then tries to render the quicktime movie comp and fails because the image sequence has not yet been rendered. However, I can't figure out why After Effects would skip rendering the first comp.
Does anyone have any idea?
Thanks for the help, and let me know if you have any more questions about the setup,
Adam

Well, you should get used to the fact that it's simply gone... Just looking at your screenshot makes me grind my teeth. From delayed writing of files to fragmentation in user folders to Windows doing obscure things this could be anything, but seriously, saving important files on the desktop? That is simply sloppy data management. There is no other way to say it. Read up on what proper file naming, incremental saving and backups are good for and why keeping work files separate and away from your user home directories is actually a quite simple, yet effective concept to avoid exactly that kind of issue.
Mylenium

Some Problems Rendering With Maya

Hi there! I had submitted a Maya job with my Qmaster and it worked fine with my sime animation sequence and putting up basic materials. Now, I have a quite complex scene and it includes materials and textures. Qmaster renders the animation sequence but it only gives me black and white outputs... the textures were not included!
What seems to be the problem?

Hi there! I had submitted a Maya job with my Qmaster
and it worked fine with my sime animation sequence
and putting up basic materials. Now, I have a quite
complex scene and it includes materials and textures.
Qmaster renders the animation sequence but it only
gives me black and white outputs... the textures were
not included!
What seems to be the problem?
Hi,
I haven't used qmaster, but i have extensive experience network rendering with maya, so here goes.
Most likely, your problem is that you are rendering across multiple machines, but the volume names are different. Your file paths must match exactly. For example, on my pc's, all of them have a y: drive. Whenever I need to network render a project, I will just use the y drive and make an exact copy of the directory on each computer. this is also the same format that the renderfarm I use. Unless you have a SAN, you will need to do something similar to this on the mac.
If you poke around, you should be able to find a log file that will show you that textures could'nt be found (missing), and in that case, the renderer render's black.
I am interested in qMaster since I have switched my studio over to mac's and need a good network renderer. If you can post your experience when you get a chance i would like to know how it works for you.
g5 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

AE Network Render in a PPro Timeline

Hi everyone,
[Win7 + CS5]
I understand that PPro does not have network render capability. I understand After Effects does, via 'Watch Folders.'
Will After Effects engage network rendering if a composition is held in a PPro timeline, and that timeline is rendered via PPro export? Assuming all materials are appropriately stored, shared, available etc of course. I.e. whenever the timeline hits an AE composition, and AE begins a render, is it possible to get it to network render that composition.
Or is the AE network render only available directly in AE via the AE render queue?
Cheers for any clever responses!

> Will After Effects engage network rendering if a composition is held in a PPro timeline, and that timeline is rendered via PPro export?
No.
> Or is the AE network render only available directly in AE via the AE render queue?
Yes.

After Effects CC (OSX MAVERICKS) Slow Over Network

Greetings
We just upgraded everyone at our small TV studio to CC.
We are opening an old AE CS6 project in CC, so it converts the project to CC and we resave it.
We are having a HUGE issue where the entire AE program becomes laggy to any user input. (click a layer, it takes 3-4 seconds to be selected. Type characters, 3-4 seconds to update, Click a menu, it takes 3-4 seconds to open, etc etc) Any user input takes a very long time to actually work in the program, so it is unusable.
Here is what I figured out so far:
-I still have CS6 installed on the mac and when I open the project in CS6 it works beautifully.
-When I open the project in CC but do not connect to the network (and therefore have missing footage), everything also works perfect as far as user interaction.
-Once I relink my footage, AE CC becomes laggy and unusable.
So it seems by that evidence that something has changed from CS6 to CC, and for whatever reason CC is slow to look over the network for the footage and each user interaction causes the large wait in program response. Moving footage locally to the computer fixes the problem, but we cannot work that way as we have TB's of footage on the network that is shared.
We have not encountered anything like this in Premiere CC, or Audition, seems limited to AECC.
AE has the latest CC updates downloaded/applied.
Thanks!!!

I am not an expert in networking, we just have the most basic of networks, our dept has 6 Mac pros , with one designated for network rendering / storing common footage. We just connect through finder to the render Mac so nothing third party going on.
It's something different with cc vs. Cs6 and it has happened on all of our machines. Back in cs6 still works smoothly.
My thought was maybe cc checks all footage differently on every action and since we are pulling so much from the network it was slow. The main comp has maybe 40 layers, with other precomps in it.
Last resort is to format and reinstall osx and all our software but it's a guess and one that would involve a weekend of unpaid work on my part ugh.

Networking: "Connection Failed" Warning

Hello!
I have a G5 tower that I use as a main system in my imaging business. The router is connected to it. I have five other Macs in my office, all wireless. There are no issues with any of the wireless devices reaching the internet, or being recognized by the network and communicating. The problem is with the main computer, as I cannot connect to ANY of the wireless units. They show up in the side panel, but as soon as I click one I get the "Connection Failed" warning. This problem is killing me, because I need to set up network rendering for computer graphics.
I hope all you brilliant minds out there can find a solution!
Thank you,
Hal

I'm having the same problem with my Windows 7 computer. It makes my MacBook unusable if the other computer is turned on. Technical support did not solve the problem

Premiere CS6 Still Has a Long Way To Go

I'm in commercial editing and work as offline editor, assistant editor and compositor. I've been using Premiere Pro ever since FCPX came out, but not in the workplace as an offline tool because of certain major missing features:
- a good EDL exporter (absolutely essential in a commercial pipeline where we're bouncing sequences to grading suites and Flame all the time)
- dupe detection (essential for prepping sequences for grading)
- timecode overlays in the monitors
- colored markers
- marker overlays (to quickly see what the content of a marker is when scrubbing in the timeline)
- searchable markers (great when needing to find one line you know you had marked)
- a visual keyboard settings editor (FCP and Avid got it right, Premiere is a mess, although improved from CS5 which didn't have the ability to search for commands)
- the ability to rename clips to match file names (can't tell you how many times I use this in FCP)
- use of CMD X, C and V for cutting, copying and pasting marked selections in the timeline without adding in/out points
- match frame edit indicators
- heal match frame edit function
- timeline to timeline editing. Not expecting what Avid offers, which is enhanced by the ability to toggle your timeline between source and record, but to be able to do what FCP7 does by letting you edit with clip data, i.e. edit your track layout and edit points from a sequence in the viewer into the timeline.
I'm super disappointed that not a single one of the above features has been addressed in Premiere Pro CS6. I think the dupe detection, timecode overlays, and EDL export are the biggest disappointments.
For a little clarity on the EDL issue, every editor and assistant I know renames clips after they're imported into the project. They don't use the "Scene" and "Take" metadata tags, because they want the clip name on the far left of the project window. This isn't so much of an issue in Avid, but that software is on a different level. Anyways, in Premiere, once you rename a clip, that's the way the clip name is going to come out out in the EDL. This is a massive problem for Alexa and RED jobs, which is most of what I work with, because timecode isn't going to be unique to a clip on a multi-day, multi-cam shoot. In FCP7, you have the option to export your EDL with either clip or file names. Alternatively, you can select all the clips from your edit and choose "Rename Clip to Match File Name." Premiere has none of these options. The only workaround is to go through every clip in your edit, reveal in project, bring up the properties, copy the file name that's there, then paste into the clip name. This is not a workable solution for a 60 second commercial with an edit every 12-48 frames.
While Speedgrade is lovely, no one is going to convince Company 3, The Mill, MPC, Light Iron, or New Hat to switch from Resolve, Scratch, Baselight or Pablo. And to get stuff into those systems, EDLs are still the preferred method when you talk to the assistants who are loading the projects.
On the good side, it's great to see improved playback stability and scrubbing, the new audio meters are great, adjustment layers are a big help, the marker tab in the project pane has a lot of potential (why not make it searchable?), and the new trim tool is GREAT and right on par with Avid.
With the exception of the playback control, though, I would trade all of the above improvements to have the hit list above taken care of. Adobe seems to have added some very good big picture, high profile improvements. It's the little things that you encounter every day in a long edit that really need some attention now. PLEASE give a look to this stuff.
I had really hoped I'd be able to use PP CS6 as an offline tool in my pipeline, but that's not going to happen. Nor do I know any editors or assistants in commercial post in LA who will want to work without the above features.
If anyone has some insights into the above features and maybe making these things work in CS6 as currently released, I'm open to hearing them and hopeful that there are workarounds.
Thanks and have a blessed day!

The command copy, cut paste don't work unless you add edits to create a
discreet clip. You can't simply copy from an in to an out point. The
workaround is to add your markers, use lift or extract, undo to clear the
damage you just did to your sequence, then paste the clipboard contents
that you still have from the lift or extract operation.
Regarding Speedgrade, it appears to be in its infancy and has a promising
future, but what you get for free from Davinci Resolve Lite is wildly
awesome. It does everything the $1000 version of DaVinci does except
stereoscopic color, network rendering, shared projects, and shared memories
between projects (i.e. power mastering). So, for free, you have a blazing
fast color grade suite with the identical toolset actively in use by
Company 3 and The Mill. Add a panel or two and you're really rockin and
rolling. We use it at the shop I'm freelancing at now and it can burn
through dailies transcodes (still essential for Red and Alexa), at about
40fps. Awesome.
I think choosing between Avid MC and Premiere is strictly a "what do you
need it for" question. The main problem with Avid is now and always has
been the hard import aspect. AMA works kinda ok, but I know no one who
starts and finishes a project strictly with AMA. Plus it doesn't work on
an average laptop without a lot of herky jerky playback, even at 10:1, and
at some point on a long edit, you're likely going to be working off a
laptop.
The ability of Premiere to ingest ANYTHING immediately, including DPX
sequences, is phenomenal. If you don't want to wait for AJA, Blackmagic
has some excellent and more affordable video I/O solutions that work with
CS6 right now. The playback is so much better than CS5.5. I think the
reason why it was a problem before was because it's trying to play nice
with anything as it is. FCP needed everything to be a quicktime. Avid
needs everything to be MXF. Premiere says "come one come all!" and that's
a tall, tall order. Now it's working great and the Adobe folks should be
lauded for whatever engineering magic they used to make this happen. Huge
timesaver, especially in finishing when I need to bounce more complex comp
work to Nuke and back.
The second thing that Premiere kills at is effects work, even though it's
not so much Premiere as it is After Effects. Avid has nothing there close
to this. Animatte? Spectramatte? Give me After Effects any day. So, you
can offline AND online a project with the Premiere and After Effects combo.
Awesome!
The biggest shortcoming Premiere has, I think, is it's audio filter suite.
It's a huge liability and something I hope they devote a lot of attention
to. The way Avid can't match the Premiere/After Effects duo,
Premiere/Soundbooth cannot match what Avid has built in. The Audiosuite
effects seemed to be designed to give you a bit of ProTools within your
NLE.
I think the best solution, at least until Smoke 2013 comes out this fall,
seems to be to choose the app that is best suited for your project. I
don't think the conversation should be about one program wiping out another
one, which it seemed to often be the tone of Avid vs. FCP debates.
The more I play with Premiere CS6, the more I like it. I used 5 and 5.5 on
commercials a few times and felt like the software was getting in the way,
particularly toward the end when I needed to generate EDLs and OMFs (I
haven't tried the OMF export out of Premiere CS6 yet, but it can't be worse
than 5.5 - my guess is it's no better though, based on what did and did not
get improved). It was fine for finishing, but you'd have to work around
playback issues all the time, which got a bit embarrassing with clients in
the room.
I think CS6, for it's numerous shortcomings - none of which are
catastrophic or deal-breakers - provides an excellent foundation on which
to build something that could definitely one day pick where FCP7 left off.
Smoke 2013 is the storm on the horizon, though, if you ask me. But
competition is GREAT and I actually hope Blackmagic joins the game as well.
The more the merrier!

Network rendering

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